Spending-deal vote could be Thurs.

A six-month stop-gap spending bill took final shape in Congress Monday, as House and Senate negotiators agreed to a formula that will raise most appropriations accounts by about 0.6 percent to meet the $1.047 trillion spending target set for the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The House Rules Committee posted the 29-page continuing resolution, or CR, on its website in the evening with the expectation that the measure could come to a House floor vote as early as Thursday.

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The goal is to avert any threat of a government shutdown while allowing lawmakers to quickly get back to campaigning at home. But the agencies left behind will pay a price given the rigidity of the funding.

Just under $2 billion in select priority programs would enjoy increases. Federal wild land and forest firefighting costs — about $800 million — are the single largest items. A $145 million increase is also provided for processing the backlog of veterans benefit applications and $282 million to purchase new cybersecurity software to protect government computers.

The Small Business Administration and such diverse items as aid for refugee children and nuclear weapons modernization also share in the increases. But the more formulaic across-the-board increase — precisely 0.612 percent — covers the bulk of the estimated $8 billion added for non-emergency appropriations.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) has been most insistent on this approach, hoping that it will pressure Congress to take a second look at doing individual bills or an omnibus package after November’s election or early next year. But there is also a destructive side to such a mechanical formula, and as a practical matter, scores of initiatives and promised new starts will be stymied.

What’s out of the bill then can be as important as what is in.

For example, no attempt was made to insert disaster aid for drought stricken farmers. The Coast Guard will have to wait longer for its sixth national security cutter. And the Pentagon, which typically escapes such long-term CR’s, will be severely pinched by the limits on entering into new contracts.

A planned multi-year procurement of the V-22 Osprey — important to the Marines as well as special operations forces — will be effectively delayed. Likewise, the USS Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class nuclear powered aircraft carrier, will have to wait longer for a scheduled overhaul and refueling.

The clearest savings are in the area of overseas contingency funds, including military operations in Afghanistan.

These so-called OCO accounts will be capped at President Barack Obama’s 2013 reduced request of $96.7 billion. This is a 24 percent, or almost $30 billion, drop from fiscal 2012. And much as Republicans have criticized Obama’s handling of the Afghanistan conflict, this peace dividend allows them to show conservatives that that total spending is still falling — even with the extra $8 billion allowed.